Jump in and take command in a fight that spans six exotic worlds with diverse environments - from steaming, swampy jungles crawling with deadly creatures to rocky wastelands strewn with boiling lava pits to ruined cities half-buried in nuclear snow. Players start by building a base from which they command a force of armored vehicles, infantry, and aircraft through a series of exploratory, offensive and defensive missions. Gamers will drive a variety of tanks and walkers, pilot the scout ships, and even jump out and fight an evil and challenging alien enemy on foot. Each side will choose from an arsenal of powerful weapons including guided missiles, mortars, mines and bazookas. This revolutionary game is the sequel to 1998's Action Game of the Year (Computer Gaming World). Complete Control Over the Battlefield!

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Battlezone II version 1.3 Readme
This project has been in development since September/October 2001, headed by
two programmers from the Battlezone II team: Ken Miller, and Nathan Mates.

A number of tweaks and enhancements are in v1.3:

* Much greater MOD (game modification) support, allowing up to 26 total races
to be active at once. Many MODders have been among 1.3 beta testers, and have
been working to take advantage of the new features. [Their participation or
nonparticipation is their own business; no support for 1.3 is implied or MODs
promised by us.]
* Developed/Tested on Windows 2000/XP, DirectX 8.0-9.0b for much better
compatability out of the box. Some testers are testing it on WinME.
* Many crashes/freezes fixed. Please note that not all bugs have enough details
to figure out how they happened, and so it probably will be impossible to get
all crashes fixed.
* Redone audio system that supports far more channels (up to 64) and
DirectSound3D for a far more immersive experience. [Old Aureal code is gone;
good riddance.] Note: not all sound cards on the market support that many
channels; if the driver on your system notes a limit under 64, BZ2 will use
that instead.
* Some graphics tweaks: Maximum ingame resolution can be set much higher than
1280x1024 if your hardware supports it. Gamma (brightness) adjustment works on
ATI cards.
* Enhancements to many parts of the game, including AI, craft handling, etc.
* Many more pregame options for IA, DM, Strat & MPI games (feature available to
MODs to define custom options pages on a per-map basis)
* Bots in DM, and some additional DM gameplay modes.
* Over 35 additional Instant Action & Multiplayer maps by several mappakers
within the BZ2 community, tweaks to some existing maps to reduce bugs. As of
February 2004, there are 16 classic & additional IA maps, 88 classic &
additional MP maps installed.
* Several additional security measures to make cheating in multiplayer much
more difficult; deliberate remote crashing of games should be fixed.
* New BZ2 editor screen layout files contributed by testers to expose more
functionality that was already there.
* Ability to rotate buildings (on 90-degree increments) for even more
base-building fun
* Updates to the manual (located in the Extras folder where BZ2 is installed
to) to give updated and more accurate information
* Includes an over 300Kb text file listing changes made since 1.2. This
changelog contains our (minimalist) notes as to what changed for each version,
and isn't guaranteed to be easily understood. But, it may be useful reading.

For now, this patch will be pretty much English-only. If you have a foreign
(French or German) version of BZ2, this patch will replace a lot (but not all)
of the files used to display text ingame with English. Voiceovers and other
sound effects will remain in the installed language. A translated version of
these text items may happen at a later time.

A special note: one of the bugs fixed is the infinite flying bug present in BZ2
1.0 - 1.2. This was removed because it is considered to be a bug by those of us
who worked on BZ2 from the beginning. It is not due to complaints from
"newbies" or the like. Certain people certainly feel strongly about this. Fine.
Your feelings are not an argument. Whining about this will not change
anything-- we've heard such complaints for years, and your comments will only
serve to harden our resolve in this. .

Compatability w/ previous BZ2 versions

Some notes on compatability w/ previous versions:

* Like all other BZ2 patches, the 1.3 patch is not network compatible with any
other version-- all players in the game must be running the exact same version
(1.3)
* Maps & DLLs for BZ2 1.2 should load fine. However, any map/dll that depends
on certain behavior in the AI, etc for scripting may need tweaking.
* Progress in Singleplayer missions, preferences should be read fine; where
more options than 1.2 exist (especially the sound setup), users may need to
adjust those new options if they don't like the defaults. 1.3 uses a new file
format for pilots/prefs, and upgrades 1.2's files on reading them. Those new
preferences files can not be read by 1.2.
* Mid-mission savegames from BZ2 1.0-1.2 can not be read, as the file formats
changed too much. But, as noted above, progress in SP missions is left
untouched.
* Missions created with the editor in 1.3 will not be readable in previous
versions, same with savegames, etc.
* Many MODs for BZ2 will be uninstalled as part of the install of 1.3. Some
broken MODs that installed themselves into the Data folder (which should
*never* have happened, but some people refused to do things right and install
to addon) may have to be manually deleted.
* MODs that replaced out large chunks of the BZ2 shell (aka Forgotten Enemies)
may need extensive tweaks before they can work with 1.3.

Requirements for this patch:

The 1.3 patch is currently about a 37-40MB download, with the bulk of that
coming from additional maps. If more maps are added (and they can be, up until
the end), this will increase the download size. The 1.3 download is designed to
upgrade any previous version of BZ2 (1.0-1.2) to 1.3. Approximately 65MB free
HD space is required to install this patch over and above the disk usage of
your existing BZ2 install. With 37+MB for the patch and 65MB unpacked size, and
50-100MB for your swap/pagefile (see below) having at least 150MB free HD space
should be required, 200-250MB really recommended.

If you're under 100MB free HD space, it is highly recommended that you get
another HD. BZ2, like all Windows apps, uses your HD as swap (pagefile) space
if your physical RAM is exhausted. You should have at least 50MB free (250MB
recommended) on your HD before starting BZ2. The 1.3 installer can be deleted
(or archived to another system, CD backup, etc) before running 1.3 to get a bit
more space.

Battlezone II v1.3 requires DirectX 8.0 or higher (tested w/ 8.0-9.0b), Windows
98/ME/2000/XP. A x86-compatible processor with MMX is required (i.e. original
Pentium, Pentium Pro are out, as is the AMD K5). At least 128MB of RAM is
required-- 192MB may be a better value-- for 2000/XP (see below). Note: I don't
believe any testing has been done with Windows95, and as MS has long-since
discontinued support for it, it may not be the best choice of OSs anymore. If
1.3 works on Win95, great. If not, you may be out of luck.

Please note that some video boards originally supported by BZ2 may not have
proper DirectX 8.x/9.x drivers for Windows 2000/XP. If this is the case, you
may not be able to use them. Please ensure that your video board has DirectX
8.x/9.x drivers for Windows 2000/XP.

With Windows 2000/XP requiring much more memory and CPU than 98, BZ2's box
specs must be adjusted. Win98 box specs say 16MB required, BZ2's box specs (as
only Win98/98SE was released) is 64MB. Thus, BZ2 requires at least 48MB over
and above Windows minimum. MS says that Windows XP Home requires 64MB (but
would be crippled), 128MB recommended. Adding 48MB to XP's usage translates to
112-176MB required to run BZ2 on Windows XP. If you have 3D video integrated
onto your motherboard, additional RAM is required-- at least 192MB is probably
going to be a usable minimum, as motherboard 3D video can use up to 64MB. [See
manual for your motherboard for exact usage, and do the math yourself.]

Most testing and development of 1.3 has taken place on machines with at least a
500Mhz processor, 256MB ram, and a GeForce or better video card. This may be a
good baseline.

Installing Battlezone II from CD on Windows 2000/XP

The Battlezone II CD does not contain the best installer, as many have noticed.
Under Windows 2000/XP, it will put up a dialog box saying that Windows NT is
not supported. For some, click 'ok' to dismiss that message, and the installer
works perfectly well after that. If the installer crashes, the following steps
may help:

(Installing BZ2)
1. Open the BZ2 CD
2. Go to the Setup directory
3. Right-click on Setup.exe, and drag it onto the desktop.
4. Right-click on the shortcut, and select Properties.
5. Select the "Compatibility" tab.
6. Check the "Run in compatibility mode" box.
7. Select "Windows 95 Compatibility Layer" in the popup.
8. Click "OK" to close the Properties dialog box.
9. Double-click on the shortcut to install BZ2.

What uninstalling 1.3?

Sorry, there is no uninstaller for 1.3 specifically. For this reason, it is
recommended that you reinstall BZ2 into a separate directory specifically for
1.3, and apply the 1.3 patch to that directory. There is no need to install any
other patches (e.g. 1.2) before installing 1.3 -- there is only a cumulative
patch able to upgrade any 1.x release of BZ2 to 1.3.

A sepatate 1.3 directory is the preferred method of installing 1.3, as it helps
get rid of any debris left over from broken MODs that installed themselves into
the data directory, doesn't have any compatability issues with MODs not yet
updated for 1.3, and gives you a clean slate to begin with.
If you take this route, probably 500-600MB of free HD space before starting the
separate install is required.

Will I get a bajillion FPS with 1.3 like I do with game XYZ?

Almost certainly not. The way BZ2 was programmed, it handles most of the
Transformation & Lighting (commonly abbreviated 'T&L') code on the CPU. Shortly
after BZ2 came out, graphics cards progressed well enough that they could
handle the T&L on them. However, rewriting BZ2's graphics code would be a
massive undertaking, not least of which doing an extensive round of
compatability testing with all of the various combinations of graphics cards
and drivers. Thus, 1.3 will still use the same basic graphics code, mainly on
your CPU.

1.3 has a few speed optimizations in place, most of them not in the graphics
code-- AI overbuild can cripple your FPS, but isn't graphics code related. At
the same time, 1.3 also has a lot more sanity checks in the code to reduce
crashes. Those sanity checks aren't free, but may not be noticeable. Some
testers have noted 1.3 runs a little better for them than 1.2 did, some say a
little slower.

What about my overclocked system?

As noted above BZ2 puts much more work on your CPU than some other games. That
amount of stress may expose faults in your overclocked setup far earlier than
other games may do. If you are experiencing problems, then please try
temporarily undoing your overclocking, and rerun BZ2. If the problem goes away,
then the problem has been isolated to the overclocking, and not BZ2. No two
applications use the same parts of the CPU, memory, etc, and "stability" in one
application does not guarantee it being in all applications.

Known Issues:

The following are some issues/quirks/bugs/whatever that are known, but

* Sound is off in the editor executable for some sound effects, especially
machineguns.
* Installer can leave readme in Windows tempdir if you view it from the
installer. Don't care.
* Editor switches to windowed mode while entering path editing mode (Shift-F9),
this avoids AVs on some boxes
* MODs should distribute .MSH files for all their models. A console-warning
will appear if BZ2 has to rebuild a .MSH file-- if end users have to do this,
it can lead to bad assets

Helpful Commandline switches:

The following are presented for reference only; be careful in how you use
them-- they may seriously compromise your ability to enjoy BZ2 if misued. To
add parameters to a commandline, you need to find (or make) a shortcut to the
executable in question, then edit properties on the shortcut. At the end of the
target edit box, put a space, then the command(s) and their arguments,
separated by spaces. [If you don't know what this means, editing commandlines
probably isn't for you.] For each of these commands, the '-', '/' or '+'
(minus-sign, forward slash, or plus-sign) can be used to start them; the
descriptions below start with - because I don't like the forward-slash
convention started back in MS-DOS 1.0.

Commandline flags in both executables

* -win Starts BZ2 in windowed mode
* -nointro Skips the opening movie
* -trackfps Shows the framerate ingame in the upper left
corner of the screen
* -resolution Width Height Sets ingame width/height of BZ2. Make sure
that this is a size your video card supports
* -depth BPP Sets ingame bits-per-pixel (BPP) used; this should
be 16 or 32
* -zdepth BPP Sets ingame bits-per-pixel (BPP) used for the
zbuffer; this should be 16 or 32
* -poweruser Sets a number of ingame preferences the way I'd
prefer
* -nointerface Starts BZ2 w/o ingame interface. Use Shift-F5 to
toggle,
* -nolights Turns off lights ingame. Should be same as
graphics preferences
* -noparticles Turns off particle effects ingame completely
* -noxmm Disables use of Pentium-3 (and higher) 'SSE'
graphics code
* -nods3d Turns off 3D sound effects, forcing everything
to use 2D pan
* -nods Should turn off sound effects completely. [Not tested
recently]
* -slowaudio When present, uses an slower but more compatible
audio play code. Use if your machine stutters when sfx are played, especially
machineguns
* -multiworld Starts with 'multiworld' (smoothing/prediction for
network play) on, even if not playing multiplayer
* -resave Forces a mission to be resaved immediately
after loading. Used mainly to ensure .bzns are at the latest versions
* -shellmap PixelSize Saves a bmp preview of the map, with the specified
pixel size. Use a power-of-2 for the size, like 128 or 256
* -noscript Disables loading of a mission DLL. [Mostly
for mapmakers]
* -login "ProfileName" Sets the initial login name
* -aipLogging Turns on logging of AIPs (AI Plans, used by
computer teams in IA/MPI/etc) to disk. Useful for mapmakers or AIP designers

BZ2Edit.exe - ONLY - commandline flags

* -nobodyhome Forces a map to not load any objects. Useful when
starting a new one or as an emergency when everything is really broken

[For more info, please see the nettips.rtf file installed to the same directory
as BZ2 by this patch]

* -net Turns on networking code
* -mapname name Sets the intial mapname used [Not tested
recently]
* -hostname "Hosted by Me" Sets the initial session name used
* -host Port# Starts hosting a game on the specified port
(default of 17770 is used if an invalid value is passed)
* -name "MyGameName" Sets the BZ2 playername of the host
* -password "TopSecret" Sets the initial password used
* -connect aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd:eeeee Tries to connect to a server on the
specified IP address, port
* -ip aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd Tells BZ2 to bind to the network adaptor with
the specified IP address. [Not tested recently]
* -lanonly Sets the default network behavior to LAN,
disabling Gamespy. Can be changed from session search page

Other cool options

BZ2 1.3 adds in a new file in the addon\Config\ directory, GamePrefs.ini. It
has a number of extra tuning values and the like in it. This can be edited in
any standard text editor like Notepad. Please back up that file before messing
with it-- it may be possible to degrade your game experience if things are
edited too much. Most options have comments before them to explain a little of
what they do, and what some of the allowable values are.

Special thanks:

What follows is a list of 1.3 testers alphabetized by board handles. Some names
might have been inadvertantly lost during a board switchover; apologies if
you're caught in this category.

Special recognition (from GSH) should go to the honorary lead tester, Commando,
for spending countless hours looking for and reproducing bugs so they can be
efficiently squashed. Also, an honorary lead asset manager should go to
GreenHeart for dozens of model, asset, map creation & tweaking.

Programming thanks:

Thanks to the following groups who genorously contributed their source code to
the world. BZ2 v1.3 uses them, and their contributions are appreciated. All of
these are (to the best of our knowledge) freely available, and includable in
commercial software without having to redistribute source.
* zlib v1.1.4, from Gzip.org
* Independent JPEG Group's JPEG source version 6b, from Ijg.org
* libpng version 1.2.5 - October 3, 2002, from Libpng.org
* STLPort 4.5.3, from Stlport.org

[BLATANT PLUG] Other games you may want to buy:

While 1.3 has been in development, Nathan and Ken have worked on the following
games for Pandemic Studios:

* Triple Play 2002 for PS2/XBox. See Easports.com for more info
* Star Wars: The Clone Wars for Gamecube, PS2, XBox. SeeLucasarts.com for more info
* Star Wars: Battlefront for PS2, XBox, PC. SeeLucasarts.com for more info

Pandemic Studios also has a number of other games in development, including
Full Spectrum Warrior (XBox/PC). See Pandemicstudios.com for the
current list of announced projects and archive of completed projects.
Purchasing games is the best way to show your support for those involved in
creating them.

Final words:

This patch was created by Ken Miller & Nathan "GSH" Mates in their spare time
working from home.

Nathan would like to dedicate this patch to the victims and heroes of September
11, 2001 and the efforts since then to bring the perpetrators to justice.

"But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar
on wings
like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not
be faint." - Isaiah 40:31

Ken cannot top Nathan's dedication, so he will just let it speak for itself.

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